


i've forgotten you like a half-remembered dream

by breaddalton



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, lowkey mention of trip as well, tw self harm, tw suicide, you really don't need to know the movie to read this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 09:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4701299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breaddalton/pseuds/breaddalton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>skye's one of the best dream extractors, but there's a part of her that won't go away. a ghost. grant is the physical manifestation of her grief and her guilt.</p><p>inception au</p><p>for skyeward month, week 2 day 1: angst</p>
            </blockquote>





	i've forgotten you like a half-remembered dream

_you're waiting for a train_

 

_a train that will take you far away_

 

_you know where you hope the train will take you,_

_but you can't be sure_

 

_yet it doesn't matter._

 

_why doesn't it matter?_

 

 

 

"Because we'll be together."

 

Skye jerks awake from her dream, if it could even be called that. If it could even be that. 

 

She can't dream anymore, that's been made obvious. Years of dream extraction and the only way she can bring herself to dream is the slip of the needle in the veins with a chemical alteration that sedates her. That allows her to forget. That allows her to be woken up.

 

She thinks she can see him sometimes, behind curtains and the whisper of the breeze. When she's walking through the street of their old haunt and she can smell him around her. When she hears their song being played on the side of the road she can feel the sway of their bodies. He's always hiding in the corners of her mind and stuck in her peripheral.

 

Maybe that's why she's prefer not to look. So that he can stay there. Feeling his presence is better than no presence at all.

 

She ignores it when they tell her that he's a liability. The conjured ghost of her dead husband has become more of a threat than a nuisance. He's a spectre in her mind, waiting in the shadows, unable to step into the light. She wants him there, no, she _needs him there_. 

 

It's the only place that he's still alive.

 

In his place, she can still feel him besides her. 

 

( _You're waiting for a train._ No. They're not. Not anymore. 

 

Trains are for the living.)

 

It's the only place she can feel him, touch him, remember him, even if it's a lie.

 

*

 

She falls. Falls deeper than she has in a long time. There are dreams within dreams within dreams, and three levels down seconds turn into hours. But past that is limbo, the world they created on their own. Unconstructed dream space where they made their home, and she needs to go there. If she wants to see him again, she has to plunge into her mind where time has no reason and all she has is him. 

 

And this is one of those days. She's come to say what she needs to say.

 

(She feels painfully empty. Dread creeping up on her, threatening her to leave and turn back while she can. There's no going back from this.)

 

Waking up on the shores of her subconscious, she finds remnants of their time together. Here her memories are realities. She walks on the plank of a dilapidated pier over still water, each side branches out to the homes they constructed in their lifetimes together here in limbo.

 

"This is the house where I grew up."

 

"Lucky. I can't even fully remember all the houses I grew up in."

 

"Liar. I know you know them like the back of your hand. I've seen it, in your dreams."

 

"Still. This is a nice house. Better than the ones I was put into."

 

"It's full of bad memories."

 

"At least we have that in common."

 

"We have more in common than that."

 

"Oh yeah, like what?" A sly smile on her lips. 

 

He'd pulled her into an embrace, one that made her bones ache for years after when he was gone. That was the real him. If there was ever anything real here. _Like I love you. Like this universe we have together._

 

The memory is vivid here, as she stares at the house he grew up in now. She can almost feel his arm come around her, warming her in the cool breeze of a false morning. Her eyes are hollow now as she remembers the first time she learned about his past. It feels like so long ago, and she looks away before the burning in the back of her eyes threatens to bring tears to the forefront.  

 

The house is magnificent, but he was right. It's full of bad memories. It's full of a life that he was running from the moment she met him. 

 

*

 

"What do you dream about?"

 

He'd looked at her like she was out of her mind. It was supposed to be a business proposal. He was supposedly an architect. Someone creative enough to create mazes in people's minds. He was a criminal. Running with the wrong people, living the wrong kind of life, all for the next paycheck. There were dream extractors for all lines of business, and his was the dirtiest. All to get away from a family that had a far reach and to live free from their cold grasp. "I don't dream."

 

"Yes, you do. We all do."

 

"Maybe I only have nightmares." He'd been impatient, jostling his knee around and checking exits like she was coming to collect a debt.

 

She didn't think she'd ever meet someone who had nightmares like her. But he would give her a run for her money. "We all have nightmares, but we also all dream. You can't have one without the other, Grant. Can I call you, Grant?"

 

He looked like he was considering something else, perhaps to rebuke her and tell her to stop trying to peddle her wares. But there had been a momentary pause and something about his expression changed. "Sure. You can call me Grant if I can call you Skye." His eyes ran her over, not even he could try and hide the small smirk on his lips.

 

She'd nodded, happy to just get her foot in the door. But how could she have known that when she'd shaken his hand that he'd be in her life forever, even long after his own had come to that tragic end?

 

*

 

"Grant, this world, this one is real. This one that we're in. This isn't the dream anymore!"

 

He'd looked at her like she was out of her mind. Shaking his head while his hands shook in tandem. "That's the lie you're telling yourself. That's the lie you're willing to believe. We have to do this Skye!" The gun in his hand looked heavy and ominous. She'd never even held one outside of a dream. She couldn't be sure about him. He'd run with a rough crowd before they'd met. It looked so familiar in his hands, even as they tremored.

 

"No, put down the gun, please Grant. We have a daughter here. What about your daughter? She needs her dad. She needs you!" She took a step closer, testing him, hoping to get close enough to disarm him. As if she knew anything about disarming someone of their gun.

 

"Our daughter is in the real world. We're in a dream! This will bring us back to her!"

 

She remembers looking at him, pleading. His eyes reflected nothing but pure determination. "Please, not like this, Grant. Please."

 

"Don't look at me like that, Skye. Don't look at me like I've lost it. I'm not insane."

 

If he was, it was because of her. She could never undo the virus she planted in his mind. That his world wasn't real. That he needed to get back to the real one.

 

*

 

On the floors of her subconscious, the place where she put her memories of him into vaults where she could go and relive them one by one, one of them was a peaceful memory. One of them had him there, in warm flannel and a loving smile. 

 

"How did you get so good at what you do?"

 

"When I was young, and I was moving around in the homes, I would dream things up for myself. Anything was better than facing the reality of where I was."

 

His face had furrowed and he'd run his hair through her hair with a calloused hand. She was always so close to him, in dreams, in memories, in life. Always within reach for her to hold. "I'm sorry about that."

 

"What's passed is passed," she shook her head, shrugging away the past because they had the future. Reaching up to touch his face, she'd planted a kiss of adoration on his lips. He tasted like warmth and whiskey, and she'd made a mental note to remember him like this. His hand reached down from her hair, as she was cradled in his arms and caressed her swollen stomach.

 

"Soon we'll have a family of our own. And we'll have to start actually remodeling the house. I guess I should pick up a tin of yellow paint while I'm out tomorrow."

 

"Make it pink."

 

*

 

_Stay here with me._

 

His ghost was so real. His ghost smelled like him, looked like him, spoke like him. He even tasted like him.

 

"There's nothing for you out there Skye. Stay here with me. We can build the home we always wanted. We can have the life we always wanted."

 

It's so tempting because she's convinced herself of this thousands of times. A permanent sedation would mean an eternity with him. "I won't feed this monster that I've created. You _aren't_ him."

 

"Yes, I am Skye. And now we can be together. You, me, our daughter."

 

In her dreams, Lara hasn't aged a day from when her father died. She's still the toddler dressed in pale pink. God, she looks so much like him.

 

"That's not our daughter. And you're not Grant."

 

"What are you talking about?" He looks at her like she's out of her mind. And maybe she is. Part of it died when he died. Part of it was so much a part of him that she'd lost the ability to access it. For her, the memory of him had been tainted by her own guilt and now this was the best version of him that she could come up with.

 

"You're just a ghost. The real Grant, he was nothing like you. You're just the best thing that I could create. But no version of you could ever be perfect. How could I imagine him, with all his imperfections and perfections? You are the vision I created because I couldn't live with the guilt of my own actions."

 

"How can you say that? I love you, Skye."

 

The gun that had appeared in her hand moments before feels heavy. Or what she imagines a gun might feel like. She'd never felt on outside of a dream.

 

She can't bring herself to pull the trigger. Not even on a figment of her imagination.

 

When you die in a dream, you wake up in real life. What happens when you kill a part of yourself? A corner of your mind? 

 

She feels the hot tears streaming down her own face, but she backs away. She can't bear to be with him anymore, but she can't bear to be without him. She feels hollowed out. "I love you too."

 

He looks like he's going to charge at her. He looks upset, to be locked away like a prisoner in her mind. In her dreams. He's a memory that doesn't change, a memory that replays so she can live them out like they're happening all over again. She won't come back here again. 

 

What was it that Trip had said to her?

 

_You can't keep him locked up here. You're the one who told me that it distorts your reality. You can't keep blaming yourself. You have to go back to your family, Skye._

 

She backs up quickly to the elevator, the one that will take her back to reality. She can't come back here again.

 

He moves towards her, in quick motions, his eyes crazed. He is desperate, it means so is she. None of this is a victory.

 

She swallows hard as she struggles to hold back the first in a long sequence of sobs. The gates to the elevator close, as she hits the button. He slams against the metal, her own mind fighting her. "You can't keep me down here, Skye. You promised we'd be together."

 

The doors shut and she can't breathe anymore.

 

She did promise him. But there are other promises. A future. Their daughter. She has a life she needs to get back to. This is a last goodbye. This is a horrible way to say goodbye, just like the last time. But it's been a decade of mourning and she needs to move on. Grief has made her weary and she's tired of being half in one world, and half in her dreams.

 

_you're waiting for a train._

 

*

 

It doesn't get better. Not ever. She can't dream because her dreams take her to him. To that vault that she's never opened, but can't bear to destroy. He stops visiting her during her jobs. He stops derailing them with gunshots and freight trains. Maybe she really has lost her mind, because she starts wishing he would again. Not enough to throw them into limbo, but enough for her to see him again.

 

Sometimes she thinks she hears the music they danced to.

 

Sometimes she thinks she can feel his fingers through her hair.

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to cat for being my beta and pushing me to be more angsty.
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](breaddalton.tumblr.com).


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